Hi! I'm new! :-D

My name is skamper, and I live in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Currently I work leading brunch (with the occasional mid or night shift just to mess with my sleep cycles and let me play with entrees) at a very busy restaurant focusing on modern comfort food. that's my steeze, I love comfort food, home cooking, soul food, and I love to play with it and see how I can mess with tradition and keep to the spirit of the dish at the same time.

I'm 41, I've been cooking for money for about 25 years, went to culinary school, and have done my level best to stay out of fine dining. I have done it while working for a large catering company for a couple of years, but the vibe in that type of kitchen is not what I'm looking for. I save that kind of cooking for my friends and family.

I travel a lot in my camper van, and have become a bit of a specialist at being a hired gun, I'm a "have knives, will travel" kinda gal. I've done a lot of temp work, jumping into a kitchen that desperately needs someone on the line NOW, where training is usually limited to a demo of what the plates looks like and memorizing the menu. That's how I got my current gig, I've been there 9 months and I love the place.

I love doing brunch, you can play with sweet and savoury, hot and cold, meat, veg, eggs, and sammiches, ooooh I love me some sammiches! I love to cook with (and drink) bourbon (bourbon is my spirit animal), Lebanese food is my soul food (thanks to my first serious cooking job), bacon is the flower of the pork plant, and thus vegan, Wednesday is my Saturday and I'm (mostly) okay with that now, gardening keeps me sane (along with dancing, cooking, and riding my bike), I still have some recipes that my mom taught me that I haven't altered in any way that just fly off the shelf when I make them as specials, and and my diet is heavily based on donuts, tacos, and fried chicken.

Welcome Chef we are glad you joined and we have a pretty good amount of Canadian chefs here at ChefTalk. You sound like what Tony Bourdain called himself at one time a "Ronin" chef a gun for hire as you say.